


Guardian

by cactusonastair



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-04 02:11:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/705317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cactusonastair/pseuds/cactusonastair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura Hobson has to perform a post-mortem on an exhumed body. Hathaway arrives to take her mind off things. Mentions events from s4e4, "Falling Darkness" and s6e1, "Soul of Genius".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guardian

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the pilot of _Waking the Dead_. 
> 
> Originally published [on LiveJournal](http://cactusonastair.livejournal.com/1172.html).

Of all the ways to spend a Thursday afternoon, this would be Laura Hobson's last choice. Stuck six feet underground, an open coffin containing a rather severely decomposed corpse at her feet, poking through blackened bones, trying to divine the cause of a death that took place fifteen years ago. So much for eternal peace.

The body belongs to a woman who'd supposedly died of drowning in the Cherwell. The coroner had ruled it an accidental death. The discovery this morning, of copious amounts of her blood behind a layer of paint on the wall of the man who'd been her landlord, said otherwise. DI Alan Peterson and his team had made the discovery, quite by accident, while searching the house for drugs. And now they had to reconcile it with the report from the pathologist - a locum, no surprise there - who'd failed to record any signs of the massive injury that must have caused the blood splatter, not to mention the victim's death. Peterson sought and received Jean Innocent's permission to reopen the case, and the family's consent for this exhumation, which has turned out to be a painstaking, torturous process, in more ways than one.

Two hours she's been stuck down here, two hours that have frayed her nerves to shreds. Every sound is muffled, the wet earth cocooning her against the familiar noises of reality. All she can hear is the occasional sprinkle of earth into the grave, sometimes due to gravity, sometimes caused by a careless footstep by someone up top, and every time it threatens to break down her defences and let the panic that's been pawing at the boundaries of her sanity come flooding in.

She shakes herself, telling herself to get a grip and get on with doing her duty. She's the one who put herself in this position, after all. She'd taken one look at the amount of groundwater attacking the rotting coffin and declared it impossible to move without disturbing the bones and destroying important evidence in the process. Peterson had tried persuading her otherwise, and she hadn't listened. Though she'd been right, professionally speaking - even handling the bones gently with her gloved hands had caused one to crumble in her hands, but not before her experienced eyes had given it a once-over and recorded its clues in her head.

Finally, mercifully, some noise breaks through the walls of silence. She stops her work to listen, and makes out the dampened echoes of voices raised in anger. One of them belongs to Peterson. The other is a low baritone, low enough that she has to strain to even recognise it. But once she does, relief courses through her system. 

And when his head appears at the top of the grave, blond hair framed against the white of the SOCO tent overhead, she has to smile.

He's too good a detective to be taken in with a smile. James Hathaway takes one look at her and says, "You look like you're in need of a break, Doctor Hobson."

Laura lets out a shaky laugh. "My back agrees with you," she replies, an answer that has the twin virtues of betraying as little of her inner turmoil as possible, and of being entirely true. Crouching over a coffin for two hours hasn't done her body any favours.

James squats down by the grave and stretches out a hand. "Can you climb up?"

She reaches out to him and misses by a good few inches. "We didn't really talk about how to get me out of here," she says, fighting to keep her voice from wobbling. "I think someone was going to bring me a ladder."

He looks away as if searching for evidence of it, and stands up again. "Hang on."

"Wait," she begins, panicking at the thought of being left alone down here again. "Don't - "

Hathaway lands next to her with a splash, and the panic disappears entirely. She even manages to be amused by his look of absolute chagrin. Of course, the scene suit's shoe covers are no defence against several inches of muddy water.

"There is a reason I had to do this down here," she reminds him.

"Indeed." Hathaway shrugs. "Ready?" His hands grip her waist, and before she can say a word, she's hoisted heavenwards by two strong arms and scrambling onto blessedly solid, dry ground. Hathaway comes climbing up after her a moment later.

It's seeing Hathaway here amid the gravestones that reminds her of the obvious question of just what he's doing here, although something tells her that's a silly thing to ask.

"You haven't gone AWOL on Robbie in the middle of a case, have you?" she settles for asking, instead.

James gives her a blank look. "Lewis knows where I am."

Of course he does. Probably plotted this together, once they'd heard what was going on.

"Pint?" James offers, jerking his head towards the main gate and the road beyond.

Laura looks longingly towards it, then shakes her head resolutely. "If I leave now, I might never make it back," she confesses.

James gives her an understanding look. "Then can I persuade you to take a turn about this cemetery with me?" he asks, offering her the crook of an elbow.

Laura's forced to laugh. She puts her arm through his, and they begin to stroll, as if they're a 19th-century lady and gentleman taking a promenade in the park, not a 21-st century pathologist and detective clad in blue and white plastic scene suits.

Robbie'd once told her a story about James bowing to a woman at the Botanic Gardens. She'd only believed him because it was Lewis, who'd never told a lie in his life. But now she can picture it. Hathaway really is an awkward, old-fashioned sod, isn't he? And yet under all that intellectual awkwardness and the old-fashioned manners beats one of the biggest hearts she's ever known.

They're interrupted in their walk by Peterson coming towards them, an apology written all over his face.

"Laura. I genuinely didn't know. I'm sor- "

"It's alright," she interrupts. Contrition really doesn't suit him. "It was - is - my professional duty."

"If I'd known, I'd have stayed..."

"I just need a break, and then I'll be right as rain," she assures him.

Peterson looks uncertainly from her, to Hathaway, who's radiating waves of hostility, and back to her again, then mutters an excuse and hurries away.

"He really couldn't have known, you know," she reminds James. Peterson hadn't even been in Oxfordshire at the time she'd been kidnapped and almost buried alive, and they hadn't exactly broadcast the story.

James harrumphs softly and digs into his pocket. "Cigarette?" he offers, sticking one in the corner of his mouth and holding out the rest of the packet to her.

She looks longingly at that, too, but has to refuse once more. "If I start _that_ again, I might never stop."

He looks down at her and silently returns the cigarette to the packet.

"That doesn't mean you can't smoke," she tells him.

"I know," he replies.

They walk some more, James leading them with seeming purpose. When he stops in front of a certain gravestone, she realises why.

"Should have brought flowers," she says. The sweet williams left there are beginning to wither.

He nods. They're quiet for a while, each thinking their own thoughts - or, judging from the incline of James' head, praying their own prayers. Laura's reflections are a bit more earthly and coloured by the experiences of the past two hours.

"He brought me here, you know, the first day we met," James finally breaks the silence. "It was the first thing he did when he came back to Oxford."

"She was quite a woman," Laura says. "Robbie adored her to bits." And still did - sadly for her, perhaps, and maybe for James too - but he wouldn't be Robbie Lewis otherwise.

James nods solemnly. By silent and mutual consent, they begin heading back the way they came. Hathaway seems to be chewing over something in his head, that makes Laura think that maybe he's about to deliver some particularly apt piece of verse or some other nugget of wisdom. But when he reveals it, it's clear that his mind's been afflicted by the same vision she had, of Val's coffin being ravaged by nature and time.

"You know, Doctor, I think I'd prefer to be cremated, after all."

Laura regards him steadily. "If you ever make me act on this information, Sergeant Hathaway, I'll murder you myself," she vows.

He gives a quick bark of laughter at that, and they proceed in a better humour back to work. He lowers her into the open grave and hands down her tools. Part of her expects him to say that he has to return to Lewis and detecting now, but on the whole she's not surprised when he settles himself down on the edge of the grave, muddied ankles and all, obviously prepared to watch over her for as long as the examination takes.

Which she is deeply grateful for, but she's feeling much better now, and since Peterson now knows about her past trauma, there's really no reason for James to feel he has to stay. So she aims for acidity and demands, "Haven't you got anything better to do with your time, Sergeant?"

James bestows an indulgent smile upon her and replies, "On the whole, Doctor, I really haven't."

Laura can honestly say she's never felt so blessed.


End file.
